Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Portsmouth and also serve as the Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research for the School of Area Studies, Sociology, History, Politics, and Literature.

Research interests

My primary research interests lie in the politics of citizenship and belonging.

I serve as the Chair of the Steering Committee on the Standing Group on Citizenship at the European Consortium for Political Research. You can stay updated with our work by following us on @ECPRSGCitizen. I lead the Transnational Civil Society (TCS) Activism: Changing dynamics and key interfaces FHSS faculty-funded project (since 10/2021-) and co-lead the Transnational Politics and Society Research Group with Prof. Wolfram Kaiser (07/2022-).

During 2019-22, I held a Visiting Research Fellowship/Associate Professorship as part of the Democracy and Citizenship in Education (DACED) research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). During this time, I initiated a new project examining '“Good” citizenship norms and behaviours among young people in Europe', using ICCS data.

Previously, I was affiliated with the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence for the Study of Transnational Europe (CESTE2) (2017-21). During this period, I led Stream 2 on ‘Societal Actors and (trans)national networking in a disintegrating Europe’ and started researching ‘Everyday citizenship during Brexit by Central and Eastern European residents and citizen activists’. As an extension of this work, Dr Aleksandra Sojka (University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M), Spain) and I are in the process of co-editing a Special Issue.

I have a strong interest in social research methods, with a particular focus on exploring research dynamics within the field of political science and the application of critical feminist, decolonial and narrative approaches. I am collaborating on this issue with Dr Olivia Rutazibwa (LSE, UK) and Seoyoung Choi (Yonsei University, South Korea) on a “Reading Through” project (2022-). As part of this collaboration, I was invited to join the Critical Approaches to Political Science Lab at Yonsei University (South Korea).

I am also intrigued by the institutional aspect of politics and presently collaborate with Professor Nicholas Allen (RHUL, UK) and Dr Kenny Ie  (The University of British Columbia, Canada). We are examining gendered representations and evolving power dynamics within and across different cabinet committees (2021-).

Building on the CESTE2 initiative, I recently concluded two interdisciplinary collaborative projects, serving as Co-PI for both:

1) 'Central and Eastern European families' citizenship perceptions, wellbeing and experiences of circular migration in the UK' with Dr Annabel Tremlett (2019-22); and

2) ‘Everyday nationalism and citizenship at British borders’ with Dr Charles Leddy-Owen and Dr James Dennis (2019-22).

I received my PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London (2015). My doctoral thesis delved into the impacts of free movement on the perceptions of citizenship, identity, and participation among young and educated citizens. The study drew upon original focus group evidence from Sweden and the UK and resulted in my monograph The politics of mobile citizenship in Europe, published by the Politics of Citizenship and Migration series (Palgrave, 2020).

For regular updates and insights of my work, you can follow me on @norasiklodi.